In a recent survey of institutional investors, Invesco discovered 26% of clients assets were in ESG investments, and that 21% of those ESG assets were in passive products. Over half of these institutional investors said it was likely that the majority of their ESG assets would be in passive products within the next five years.
Interest in ESG for bonds has been growing rapidly, AUM has risen 56% year-to-date compared to 15% for non-ESG bond ETFs. This corresponds to Invesco’s data that suggested 42% of the industry investors they surveyed said they would be interested in domestic corporate bonds for their passive ESG exposure.
The Invesco GBP Corporate Bond ESG UCITS ETF offers investors an ESG-focused portfolio of Sterling-denominated, investment-grade corporate bonds, and is the first of its kind in Europe. The ETFs are priced inline with Invesco’s broader corporate bond ETF range, with ongoing charges of 0.1% per annum.
Using the Bloomberg Barclays MSCI Sterling Liquid Corporate ESG Weighted Bond Index as a reference point, the ESG-based exclusions remove around 7% of the securities from the parent index, while more than 40% of securities are removed on liquidity grounds.
